


Prima Nocta

by V01D0UT



Category: Death Stranding (Video Games)
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Bible Quotes, Broken Bones, Child Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Christianity, Daddy Issues, Death, Domestic Violence, Drugged Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Gore, Higgs Monaghan getting his ass kicked, Incest, Just generally a bad time, Loss of Virginity, Lots of Crying, M/M, More Suffering, Multi, My First Smut, Orphans, Other, Parent/Child Incest, Rape/Non-con Elements, Religion, Religious Abuse, Sibling Incest, Starvation, Suffering, Teeth, Twincest, Twins, Uncledaddy - Freeform, child brides, so much blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:08:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23265961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/V01D0UT/pseuds/V01D0UT
Summary: Daddy said they were twins, not identical, but certainly a pair.  Daddy was a towering, Godly man; strict and firm, generous with his booming words and broad hands.  As years went by, Daddy’s gaze would start to linger on their growing bodies.Before Higgs Monaghan was Higgs Monaghan, he was a brother.God helps those who help themselves - so help yourself and read the friggin tags.
Relationships: Higgs Monaghan/Original Character(s), Higgs Monaghan/Original Female Character(s), Higgs Monaghan/Other(s), Higgs Monaghan/Sibling, Higgs Monaghan/Uncledaddy
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	1. Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to DozingGreen for some hardcore editing work and advice. Also thanks to Linguale for the beta read and the rest of the server for encouraging my depravity.

  
  
“I should have left you to rot in that hole with your Mama. I pray and pray that one day, the Lord will see fit to relieve me of this burden. Your sister is my reward for being His faithful servant and you are my punishment.”  
  
“I’m sorry, Daddy.”   
  
Daddy said they were twins, not identical, but certainly a pair. A matching set of soft round cheeks and big blue eyes looking up fearfully behind wisps of baby hair. They had names of course, but Daddy used them so rarely it was hard to remember what they were. "Nonsense from a children's book, infantile and Godless", he had called them. On good days they were Brother and Sister, on bad days they were Boy and Girl, and on the worst days they were nothing at all.   
  
Daddy was a towering, Godly man; strict and firm, generous with his booming words and broad hands. There was only one Book in his bunker, though the siblings were not allowed to read it themselves. When Daddy was having a good day, he would regale them with fantastical stories and lessons, sometimes from The Book and sometimes about life Outside. Outside was a horrible, monstrous place where acid fell from the sky and damned souls would burst out of dead bodies to eat you. Daddy was a very kind and gracious man for taking care of them and keeping them safe, as he told them often. But good days quickly turned to bad if the children asked too many questions or disobeyed him, both punished with pain and hunger.   
  
Of course, because of the state of the world, most of the bunker’s space was reserved for supplies and tools and things to keep the family alive. Daddy had a bedroom, but taking care of children was part of God’s plan, not his, so the twins had to make do by sharing a closet - a small rectangle with a faucet and a drain in one corner. When Daddy locked up the twins on bad days, little pairs of eyes had to adjust to near-darkness, relying on the soft glow from the kitchen creeping in under the edge of the door.   
  
Just outside the closet, behind a loose panel along the wall, was a small cubby where the twins would stash away any interesting little trinkets they found when Daddy wasn’t looking - a corkscrew, a bit of green glass that had been polished into a sphere, a rock that might have come from Outside, a long piece of red string. It was rare that the siblings were able to admire their spoils, but knowing that they had them at all provided a respite, like a tiny sanctuary in that dark place.   
  
The twins didn’t have their own clothes, just Daddy’s old shirts draped over them like gowns and their tiny bare feet pattering along metal floors. It all wasn’t so terrible when the two were small, easily lying on their sleeping mat or hiding under a threadbare blanket playing hand games together in the early hours before Daddy woke up. The siblings could huddle together under the shelter of the dining table when Daddy's voice shook the room, his menacing frame large enough to block out all light from that scarred panel in the kitchen ceiling.   
  
As the twins got older, the shirts and the rooms grew smaller. They could barely fit on the thin mat together if they curled up, limbs carefully slotted around each other. Brother had finally gotten taller than his sister, but still looked like a baby giraffe - all unkempt hair and gangly arms and legs. They both had pale, delicate skin with a dusting of freckles, though Sister’s seemed to stand out more. Her hair was darker, almost black, and fell in long waves down her back. In a rare show of affection Daddy would take great pride in keeping it brushed and braided every morning. He insisted that she grow and cherish it as a show of devotion for him. After all, she was going to be his Bride one day.

“You’re going to be my faithful and obedient Wife. Like Adam and Eve we will be fruitful and multiply,” he would say, sometimes to her, sometimes to no one. As years went by and more of her body escaped the confines of her shirt, Daddy’s gaze would start to linger, tracking her patiently as she moved through the kitchen to prepare the family meals.  
  
On some days, the twins could feel lecherous thoughts in the air, humming like static before a lightning strike. Daddy would call Sister into his room and make her lie down on the bed, her hair lovingly spread across the pillow. He would lay himself down beside her, cooing and whispering as he lifted up the only piece of clothing he would ever allow her to wear, threadbare fabric unveiling her naked body. Daddy would hold his giant hand against her flat stomach, running meaty fingers through the sparse down of her newly grown pubic hair, trailing up her rib bones to cup the swells of her budding breasts.   
  
Sister had learned over the years to be still and quiet though her eyes still burned with tears, pointing unfocused at the steel sky overhead. She would try to think of other things to take herself away, but she had nowhere to go. The girl could only pray that he would be merciful and manage to restrain himself from ripping her in two - just for one more day. Daddy’s touch left behind a wake of prickling goosebumps, her trembling legs and clenched fists being mistaken as a sign of arousal.   
  
Daddy would spread her legs and rub a rough, calloused finger along the outside of her vulva, thinking out loud about how he could barely wait for her to fully ripen so he could taste her sweet juices. Soon, soon Lord willing, he would repeat with a growl, rubbing his angry red cock against her. On braver days, he would shove that swollen thing into her tiny hand or her mouth, grunting and sweating as he rutted. The first time he used her mouth, he took her hair into his righteous fist and proclaimed, “this isn’t a cock, it’s an Act of God,” before he made her choke on the thick, musty flesh and the cum that followed.   
  
As time went on, these visits were interspersed with Daddy calling her twin into his room instead. The boy always hesitated, eyes pleading, but obeyed in the hopes that he could help ease Sister’s burden. Brother's visits were much less loving, no soft words or patient hands. Daddy was tortured having to wait until Sister became a woman so he could properly wed her, truly unfair for someone who gave the twins so much, and he took his frustration out on Brother. He didn't have to worry about preserving the boy's purity, after all. He wasn't a part of the Lord's plan for Daddy and his little girl.

The first few times were the worst, with the boy screaming and bleeding and crying. But Daddy couldn't help how fat his cock was or how it pulled and tore at delicate skin, nor was he interested in easing the way. A few times, when Daddy wanted some peace and quiet, he would shove a pill down Brother’s throat with rough fingers and wait until the boy wobbled and tripped over his own long, coltish legs. Then Daddy was free to shove Brother’s face into the mattress and unburden his sins deep inside the young guts without complaint.  
  
However, the afterglow quickly became white hot with shame and rage - Daddy would start to weep his confession, open hands pleading for forgiveness from an unfeeling metal sky. But lamentation would quickly turn to lashing out.   
  
“The serpent beguiled me and I ate!” he howled, words echoing off the walls.   
  
He would beat the boy for tempting him so, for trying to lead him astray from the path that God had set out for him. The twin certainly had the Devil in him, always had, and Daddy was a pious man. He would drive the poison out of his little body with righteous fists, beating him until he wouldn’t get back up. A few times he knocked loose a tooth, blackened eyes, broke fingers and ribs, kicked him until he was bleeding from both ends.   
  
Sister could hear Daddy’s wails and Brother’s choked cries through closed doors and would hide in the closet, terrified and ashamed and helpless, biting her hands to keep from screaming until she lost her voice. Afterwards, Daddy would shove the boy’s limp body out into the kitchen for Sister to collect, a discarded pile of blood and bones.   
  
On those nights she would lie awake curled next to her twin in that tiny closet, her delicate hand resting on his chest, feeling each breath slow until it seemed to stop. He would be so terribly still, his lips blue, until jolting awake with a gasp - crawling to the corner to puke blackness into the drain. When the waves of nausea passed he would cry softly into her chest while she pet his face, the soft hair of his sideburns becoming more coarse with each day. She would clench her teeth and choke back sobs to keep from waking Daddy, gathering Brother up into her lap as best she could to try to soothe him back to sleep, noticing how the bruises dappled his long, pale body.

  
  
_((_ _Heal me and I shall be healed; save me and I shall be saved_ _))_

  
  
It had been quiet for a few days, the light that came through that near-opaque panel in the ceiling had been so dim that it was hard to tell an overcast day from nighttime. Daddy was restless, making the twins count and stack supplies for the hundredth time in a row. He kept pacing between all the rooms like an ocean wave, including through the little room next to the Door, where the children were not allowed to go. Brother had managed to sneak in there once to find a video monitor displaying what must have been Outside, but he got his nose broken and a day without food for his trouble.   
  
Sister was moving slow today, the breakfast she had made for the three of them tasted off and she quietly admitted her stomach was hurting. Daddy reluctantly told her to go lie down for a nap and snapped that her twin would have to work twice as hard now. She curled into a little ball on their mat, muscle cramps making it hard to sleep peacefully. In her dreams, she could hear someone laughing from far away and the sharp patter of rain against metal. 

She was eventually woken up by the sounds of Daddy yelling and smashing something against the closet door.  
  
“Time and time again you spew filth and poison in my home!” he bellowed, punctuating his words with open-handed strikes to Brother’s face, “Father of Lies!” Her twin tried to shield himself with delicate hands, futile against Daddy’s anger, while still shouting defiantly, “I saw! I saw it!” Daddy went to the wall and grabbed his switch, a long metal rod that he used strictly for beatings, and cracked it against one of the boy’s legs so hard that he fell to the floor with a yelp.   
  
“You’re starting to get hair on your balls, so you think you can take me now, is that it?” Daddy pointed down at the boy with the switch, jabbing at him, “Think you can take my place? Fill my head with sinful thoughts until I’m driven away from God’s light?” Daddy’s face was red and sweating with fury. He flipped over the little kitchen table with one hand easily enough, a show of force, “You’ve worn out your welcome, tempter!”   
  
She had been peeking through the doorway the whole time, but had now slowly slunk out, looking around the room frantically for something she could do to stop Daddy from killing her brother. Even though she was getting taller these days, her slender frame would still snap under Daddy’s meaty hands if she was caught. Her twin spotted her as he stumbled back to his feet and gestured for her to go back into the closet. Brother turned his focus and grabbed the switch in Daddy’s hands on the next swing, who responded by pulling back and punching him in the mouth, splitting the boy’s lip and snapping his head back. Daddy turned and his grey-blue eyes lit up, as if seeing her for the first time.   
  
“Well look at that,” he said almost dreamily, eyes trailing low. “You got my knuckles all bloody on my wedding night, Boy.”   
  
She looked down at herself to see blood, not much, but enough, trickling down her legs past the hem of her shirt. She covered herself up with both hands, her face as red as her thighs. Daddy laughed, cackled almost, and tossed away the switch with a clatter. Excited strides quickly carried him over to his little girl, his bride-to-be, scooping up thin wrists, and without pause drug her bodily towards his bedroom. His booming voice chanting verse and scripture about their Holy union, drowning out her pleading echo, "No no no no please no, Daddy!"   
  
Brother didn’t know what to do- he wasn’t strong enough to fight Daddy, but he had to do something. He needed to think of a way to attract that monster’s attention away from his twin. Blood poured down his neck from his mouth, dripping along the floor, and spread to a knife that had been flung when Daddy flipped the table. He quickly palmed it, struggling to his feet and running to the other side of the room, to that loose panel in the wall behind the shelf.   
  
Daddy was stopped in his path by the sheer audacity of the whelp, and as he turned fully the boy hit the panel with his fist, knocking it to the floor with a loud crash and revealing the hidden store of food and supplies the twins had been squirreling away over the years. There was a moment of very loud, tense silence, Daddy’s red face turning nearly purple.   
  
“I have been betrayed!”, he roars like an animal, throwing Sister away from him, her back hitting a row of cabinets. “My whole life I’ve tried to obey and serve you, Lord, but I have been betrayed by my own flesh and blood!” The children locked eyes across the room but were scared to cross the boiling sea of Daddy’s rage.   
  
“Years of my life wasted trying to raise you right and keep you safe, and you LIE and STEAL from me. Food from my mouth, clothes from my back-” his eyes focused for a moment and locked onto the boy. Daddy’s hefty paw swings out and lifts him up into the air by the front of his shirt, weightless to such a large man.   
  
“SERPENT,” he spat violently, slamming the smaller frame against the wall. A second hand wraps around that slender throat, spanning neck to collar, before squeezing tightly. Daddy’s murderous, tear-filled eyes stared down at the boy while he choked the life from him, calling forth blackness in the corners of Brother’s vision.

  
  
_((But take heart; I have overcome the world))_


	2. Dusk

Daddy was gone. The body that had spewed red anger and pain into the bunker was quickly deflating.   
  
The Brother’s breath came ragged and loud, coughs escorting droplets of blood from his mouth. “Reject him and all his empty promises,” he rasped, throwing the knife down as punctuation. Sister was sobbing, stuck in place as she had been the whole time, but meeting the young man’s eyes she unfroze and barreled into his chest. They became a tangle of arms and legs on the floor, trembling and crying and bleeding. Daddy’s glassy eyes watched the light slowly fade from the ceiling window, the dripping from his open neck slowing to nothing.   
  
The twins didn’t move for a long while, spooned together only a few feet from the now-cooling corpse. Brother curled around her; she could feel his even breath softly fanning her ear and wondered if he had fallen asleep. Her stomach still ached and cramped. The girl stretched out, her back rubbing against her twin’s chest, and her hand accidentally slipped into Daddy’s spreading pool of blood. She pulled it back to study closely, an almost-black glistening across her fingertips, slick and sticky all at once.   
  
Brother wasn’t asleep, but watching her rub her fingers together, eyeing Daddy’s rage distilled down into a congealed puddle coating the ground like a black mirror. Running his tongue across his teeth, the bruised twin noticed a canine on the bottom was missing - Daddy’s parting gift. The taste and smell of blood came from every direction; his split lip, Daddy’s corpse, and Sister’s womb, all still leaking quietly. Brother’s dick twitched. She was the only source of warmth left in the world now and he needed to seek shelter.   
  
Sister felt the slim arm snaked around her waist tighten a bit. He pulled her closer, almost too easily, and when they made full contact she knew he was already hard. Her first instinct was to grab him, to tell him to stop - but he exhaled loudly in her ear, a purr that went straight to her clit.   
  
Sometimes, before, she would wake to him slowly grinding against her ass until he came, whispering, “ _I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry,_ ” and shuddering against her back. She would wait until he fell back asleep to slip a hand between her legs and touch until her body trembled and twitched with electricity and heat. Other nights, she would stare at the metal ceiling, fondling him as he pretended to sleep. His tiny kitten sounds and the pulsing of his dick in her hand made her thighs slick. Disjointed encounters, never spoken of, just desperate graspings for intimacy.   
  
This time was different - not the awkward, trembling thrusts she had grown used to. He was bold, determined, hands finding purchase on her body like a lifeline. Brother pressed his forehead against the back of her neck as he released himself from the hem of his shirt - freeing the cock of a young stag, not fully developed but still fresh and throbbing. Sister reached behind herself and took him into her hand, the familiar weight in her palm mixed with the blood on her fingertips. She let him slip between the softness of her thighs, nestling up against the warmest part of her. He was already bucking his hips involuntarily, the friction making her part her legs slightly, coating him in something that was much slicker than Daddy’s blood. Brother shuddered and pulled her back harder against his cock, his fingers digging into her hip in the desire to be closer.   
  
The young woman hugged herself with both arms, covering her chest when her twin tried to touch her breasts, but still pressing herself back into his thrusts. He paused at this, running a hand down her side, before rolling her onto her stomach and climbing on top of her. He straddled her thighs and slid his cock between her legs again, the new angle bringing him dangerously close to her entrance with each thrust. Her sibling’s ragged breath in her ear, the weight being pressed into the floor and the shoreline of Daddy’s blood, Sister couldn’t help but roll her hips backwards so that the next stroke left him enveloped by her heat.   
  
They both gasped softly, overcome by the feeling of being connected so physically. His cock sank into her easily, though friction from her blood made the drag just shy of painful. He wanted to be careful and to go slowly, to treat his twin with care, but that dissolved as soon as he felt that tight wetness around the head of his dick. His fucking became instinctual, animal, as rhythmic and encompassing as a racing heartbeat.    
  
Both quiet, at first, as if they thought they would wake Daddy up. But noise started pouring out of the boy, whimpers and moans and shuddering breaths that were soon accompanied by Sister’s. She braced herself as best as she could, clinging to the floor as he held her down and fucked through to the very centre of her body - rippling pleasures and pains through every piece. His pace was becoming frenzied, his knobby knees slipping in Daddy’s blood, and he all but howled as he bucked and filled her up with his cum, white knuckles gripping her waist, leaving red handprints. She could feel him throbbing inside her, so deep that it ached, and in the cresting of her own pleasure all she could respond with was the trembling of her legs and a small strangled whimper.   
  
Bodies buzzing, adrenaline crackled along their skin as they lay, melting and overheated on the floor. Brother pressed his forehead between sharp shoulder blades and moans softly with each breath, his softening cock still twitching and spilling cum. Another wave of relief, another heart slowing, another thing that can’t be undone.   
  
When he slipped out of her, she clenched, not wanting to lose the connection between them. His weight was a comfort, his heavy breathing a metronome, almost hypnotizing. She could feel him shuddering against her back and realized that he had started crying. Brother collapsed and rolled off of her, but she quickly moved to curl up against his chest, burrowing under his chin and repeating, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” He put his arms around her and slowly quieted down, eventually sighing and clearing his throat now that the emotions boiling over inside of him had died down to a simmer. Looking up at her brother she noticed a few soft hairs growing along his jawline.   
  
“I belong to you,” she whispered. “We’re married now, like Daddy said.”   
  
She felt Brother tense up, pause, and then he chuckled, his voice vibrating through her.   
  
“You don’t belong to nobody. Neither of us do,” he mused. “What Daddy said ain’t shit now.”   
  
Sister furrowed her brows, the plait of her hair coiled on the ground behind her like a snake. Brother decided she needed a bit of convincing. Sitting up, the young man reached across the mess they had made to grasp the discarded knife, still coated in Daddy’s blood. He softly lifted his sister’s braid and began to saw it off at the base. Hair split and fell around her shoulders, sticking to the floor - eventually curls began to spring up around her face, freed from their heavy weight of Daddy’s affection. He touched the soft locks, ruffling them up, enveloping her head in a short, dark halo that matched his. Soft bright eyes looked relieved, unburdened.   
  
“We’re free,” he said, touching his forehead to hers.   
  
She hesitated, “Are we? The world is destroyed. We’re still trapped here with Daddy.”   
  
He looked at small hands grasping his forearm as if she might float away, their skin a matching pallor. He spoke again with a small smirk, his voice bold, now more like a man’s than a scared boy’s.   
  
“Y’know, once...Daddy went to get tools and left me in the hold, said the shelves needed fixin'. I saw some kinda, uh, tunnel in the ceiling where the shelves were hanging. I crawled up in there, and I could see through this little hole.”   
  
“See what?”   
  
“Outside. Not on a screen. For real. It’s open and empty and it smells like nothing I’ve ever smelled before. Cold and bright. And so, so very big, you won’t even believe it. And there’s mountains, like The Book said.”   
  
She stared at him, eyes as blue and wavering as rivers she had never seen. She recited a passage that Daddy had once read to them, “T-the mountains melt beneath him and the valleys split apart, like wax before the fire-”   
  
“-like water down a slope,” he finished for his twin. Brother took a lock of Sister’s hair in his fingers and rolled it around before continuing. “He lied. Daddy said there were monsters out there, and Death, but I could only see sunlight. He lied about everything.”   
  
Daddy’s body replied with only silence.   
  
“But just in case, we’ll take Daddy away, somewhere far, and then we’ll come back and clean up.”   
  
“Do we have to?” she said, almost to herself.   
  
“He might have been telling the truth, just once,” he trailed off.

“No, I mean, do we have to come back here?”   
  
He looked down at her, ruminating, tracing one of her eyebrows with his thumb, “Not if you don’t want to. I’ll leave everything to follow you.”

  
  
_ ((Perhaps this is the moment for which you have been created)) _

  
  
It was hard to tell how much time had passed since the siblings drifted to sleep, but the soft glow in the overhead port suggested it was morning. The two were silent as they rose, whether out of habit or mourning or guilt. Brother took his sister’s hand and led her into the shower, the one they almost never got to use, and they both stood for what seemed like eternity under the water - not to drown, but to be cleansed. They washed each other gently, clearing away layers and years of blood, tears, bruises, spit, dirt, and pain. Tears ran down Brother’s face as delicate hands touched his cheek and scrubbed at his hair. Sister brought her husband-brother’s fingers to her lips and kissed each one of them - the very fingers that plunged a knife into Daddy’s throat.    
  
Sister still made breakfast as usual, her dainty bare feet carefully stepping around Daddy and the syrupy red-brown veneer of his blood, his eyes no longer leering at her but looking ever upwards to Heaven. She shivered from a mixture of fear and guilt as the reality of Daddy’s death finally began to sink in, hesitating for a moment before splitting the rations into two portions instead of three. The twins ate in silence, but Brother reached out to place his hand over hers, and a gentle squeeze of reassurance seemed to ease her conscience. Afterwards, Brother brushed her hair - a ritual he couldn’t bring himself to abandon - leaving the shorn ends flying wild and free like his.   
  
The twins wrapped up Daddy’s body in his bedsheets, the developing stench of his decay starting to tickle their noses. There were no shoes that would fit them, so they wrapped their feet in a couple pairs of Daddy’s discarded boots to provide some kind of stability, their footsteps now heavy and uncoordinated. Oversized old clothes were rolled and torn and re-purposed into armour for the vast unknown on the other side of the Door. Stolen and hoarded supplies were finally called up, wrapped tightly, and tucked away into pockets and forgotten rucksacks.    
  
Brother let his fingers hover over the lever on the Door, the one he had been beaten near-to-death for touching, before grabbing and pulling with all his weight. Metal screamed and rust flaked down from the ceiling as the Door was finally pried open like the lid to a long-forgotten sarcophagus. As the twins’ sensitive eyes squinted against the sharp sunlight, they laced their fingers together and stepped Outside for the first time.   
  
It would take time to adjust to it all, probably more than they had to spare. The sounds, the smells, the sun, the sheer vastness of it all. Everything felt so raw, eyes and skin prickling against too much stimulation. Even the gentle breeze felt like something screaming in their ears, the cool air seizing up in their lungs with each breath.   
  
Brother was overwhelmed, dizzy, his stance wavering as if he were on a boat in choppy waters. His first instinct was to turn back around and retreat to the shelter of the bunker, but Sister’s hand was his anchor. She seemed so much braver than him in that moment, staring open-mouthed at the wide emptiness before them and pulling her hood off, little noises of amazement escaping her. There were mountains in the far distance like Brother said, stabbing into the sky, crowned with clouds and snow. Before that, the ground rose up into rolling hills, a natural wall separating the bunker from the world.   
  
Brother took a few minutes to calm his nerves and to gather his resolve, bundling up further and using the fabric of his hood as blinders against the onslaught of sound and smell and light that attacked from every angle. He looked back through the doorway to see Daddy’s sheet-wrapped corpse waiting patiently and couldn’t help but notice how much smaller he looked now.   
  
His hand momentarily slipped from Sister’s so he could take the opportunity to go back into the bunker and stare around the tiny, sad space, reliving the events of the last few days. Fingers touched the steel wall - a shell enveloping a world of blood and violence - and could feel his sister’s sobbing whispers and the snaps of his broken bones etched into every surface. Part of him wanted to stay, to return to the safety of this filthy cage, even with the promise of freedom just a few feet away.   
  
He stared at the man rotting on the floor, trying to feel something, anything, but he was completely numb. But even through his numbness, Brother knew it was time to get moving. Daddy’s body certainly didn’t want to abandon his kingdom though, the weight of his large build almost too much for the boy’s slender frame to move at all, eventually he managed to drag the corpse backwards to the Outside. Sister was still standing there, scenting the air with eyes closed, feeling the breeze ruffle through her hair and clothes. When she opened her eyes and saw her twin, she smiled and touched his face reassuringly. They nodded at each other and hooked their fingers under the twine that held Daddy’s shroud together, pulling him away from the only home they had ever known.    
  
It was hard work getting Daddy up that hill, the two weak from a life without exercise and nutrition, tripping over ungainly feet. Once they reached the crest the land spread out before them like an endless blanket dotted with rocks, plants, and a river winding through it all. Sister stopped for a moment to look around, amazed and delighted. Her choppy hair caught in the now-dimming light, softly framing her face as she turned into the wind. Brother caught himself staring, a smile surfacing at the sight. Freedom truly suited her.   
  
“It smells different up here,” she mused, noticing the growing cloud cover above. A small tap behind her, to the side, in front, then she realized that something was falling from the sky. Rain. He noticed a few drops hitting her hair, leaving behind silvery white strands in her dark curls.    
  
Not rain. Timefall.   
  
“Put your hood back on,” he said while simultaneously raising it up over her head for her. “Don’t let it touch you.”   
  
Sister bundled up more, pulling fabric around her face to protect against the Timefall and the sudden biting cold. Brother leaned back down to grab the body again so they could continue, but something made him pause.   
  
Daddy had started to vibrate, low and deep at first, and they could feel it run through the ground and up their legs. He was sinking slowly, melting into a thick dark ichor that had risen up through the dirt to cradle his body. Golden flakes started to form and flicker up from Daddy’s shrouded face, trailing into the air like smoke. Brother could feel something coming towards them in the Timefall - a spectre, a ghost, a great ominous monster.   
  
Sister grabbed her twin’s hand and tried to pull him away from the quickly spreading black pool, but he stood locked in place, his other hand reaching for Daddy - to save him? To accept the invitation of the new whispers in his head?   
  
She tried again to step back but her feet were stuck fast, sinking into the quagmire. A harsh wind picked up, making the choppy tar look like hands reaching for her. Coldness climbed her legs now, black faces forming, open mouths shrieking up at her. Brother finally tore his attention away from Daddy’s golden halo in time to see a great shapeless monster begin to wrap up his twin’s body.   
  
He tried to pull her free with the hand still in hers, but his hold started to waver, skin slipping away as his arms dissolved into the same blackness that gripped her legs. The siblings locked eyes, so very blue and terrified. Her tether to him broke as his hands were no longer solid enough to hold and she was quickly dragged away by a mass of liquid demons. Sister tried to cry out for him but her voice was cut off by tar filling her mouth.   
  
The last thing that pierced her mind was the sound of him screaming her name in the darkness before she was swallowed by blinding white pain.   
  
Daddy was right.


End file.
